So why did he sign it if he didn’t know? This sort of certification, signed under threat of going to jail, was Congress’s genius idea for preventing exactly the type of situation we have seen with MF Global. Why doesn’t it work? And if it truly can’t work, why do we keep the law with all of its other flaws?

Question: Why should we believe that the motives of people in (cough, cough) “public service” are different from the motives of people in the for-profit sector? Was Jon Corzine a rapacious self-seeker at Goldman Sachs, then a public-spirited man when he was in the Senate and in New Jersey’s governorship, only to revert to form when he went to MF Global? If you doubt that this is true, and suspect that Jon Corzine was the same guy all along, why would you want to give government more power?